Chip on shoulder drives Magnite's streamr.ai acquisition strategy

The competitive drive that fuels startup success never disappears, even after acquisition, according to Magnite's leadership discussing their September 9, 2025 purchase of streamr.ai. "The chip on the shoulder never goes away," Chief Product Officer Adam Soroca explained during a podcast discussion about the deal. "Some of us are cursed with this burden, and it will never go away until the day we die." This relentless ambition underlies Magnite's strategic bet that performance-driven CTV advertising will become the next major growth catalyst for unlocking small and medium-sized business participation in Connected Television advertising.

According to Soroca, Magnite had been monitoring the SMB space for several years while seeking the next driver of growth beyond traditional linear television migration. "We've been looking at the SMB space for the last several years and looking at what the next driver of growth is for connected television," Soroca explained. "SMBs is just as exciting" as established growth drivers like linear money movement and live sports activation on CTV.

The acquisition timing aligns with broader industry transformation in video advertising production. The Interactive Advertising Bureau indicates 86% of buyers currently use or plan to implement generative AI for video advertisement creation, with expectations that AI-generated content will comprise 40% of all advertisements by 2026.

Moffie characterized the decision to sell as driven by scaling opportunities that emerged after streamr.ai pivoted from direct SMB sales to white-labeling technology for larger enterprises. "We started selling into enterprises about a year ago and once we stopped going direct SMB and started white labeling our tech to larger broadcasters agency and ad tech platforms everything started clicking," Moffie said.

The strategic partnership developed organically through existing business relationships. According to Moffie, most white-label customers were already SpringServe customers, and streamr.ai had begun integrating with Magnite's ClearLine platform. This foundation created what Moffie described as natural synergy that would "drastically accelerate the timeline by being part of a scaled company rather than doing it on our own."

Soroca emphasized that Magnite's approach focuses on enabling ecosystem partners rather than direct SMB sales. "We're not selling directly to the SMBs. We're providing this technology and enabling those who are already or who are intending to sell to the SMBs," Soroca explained. This strategy leverages agencies, tech providers, broadcasters, and CTV media owners who want to reach the SMB market.

The performance television thesis emerged as central to the acquisition rationale. Soroca argued that television advertising's holistic impact on other media channels makes it particularly valuable for SMBs. "When you run ads on television, it improves the ROAS of all of your other media, your display, your social, all that gets a pickup," Soroca said. This cross-channel amplification effect allows SMBs to optimize their entire marketing portfolio through CTV activation.

Moffie's company-building approach emphasizes weekly feature shipping combined with aggressive marketing promotion. "Every single week I had to write an email newsletter and then make sure we were getting the word out on new features, but at the end of the day, we needed to actually ship new features to promote," Moffie explained. This approach included AI-first problem-solving across all product development areas.

The streamr.ai platform's creative automation capabilities address traditional television advertising barriers. According to Soroca, the tools enable SMBs to "appear on the 60-inch glass with this beautiful professionally made creative that's engaging and colorful and dynamic with music and voiceovers." This represents a dramatic reduction from conventional television advertising workflows that require weeks or months from concept to campaign launch.

Magnite's integration strategy extends beyond SMB enablement to include embedding streamr.ai technology into SpringServe platforms. This approach allows inventory sellers to help marketers create sophisticated advertisements directly within Magnite's ecosystem, potentially serving both large brands and SMBs through unified toolsets.

Soroca identified live television programming as another critical frontier requiring technological advancement. Live events create massive system spikes that traditional programmatic infrastructure struggles to handle. "These systems were not designed for these massive spikes that come in during the first break of a football game," Soroca explained. Magnite uses machine learning to predict advertising breaks and coordinate demand-side platform calls to manage these challenges.

The company's data infrastructure includes household graph technology designed to enable holistic campaign approaches across connected devices. According to Soroca, this capability allows marketers to plan advertising sequences that follow consumers across television, mobile, and desktop environments with coordinated messaging strategies.

Moffie's marketing strategy demonstrates the importance of founder visibility in adtech startup success. Both hosts characterized Moffie as the "most prolific startup CEO marketer in adtech," with consistent presence across LinkedIn, Twitter, newsletters, and industry events. This visibility helped validate commercial viability and attracted enterprise customers who recognized peer adoption.

The streamr.ai team's technical background includes expertise from major technology acquisitions. Moffie previously worked at Wurl, which AppLovin acquired for $430 million in 2022, along with product roles at Yahoo and Shutterstock. Chief Technology Officer Frank Turano brings engineering experience from Shutterstock and Dotdash Meredith.

Industry data supports the strategic timing of the acquisition. Connected TV's share of media budgets is projected to double from 14% in 2023 to 28% in 2025, while small business advertising represents substantial untapped revenue potential for CTV publishers. Traditional linear television required minimum spending commitments that excluded smaller businesses from television marketing strategies.

The acquisition incorporates performance measurement capabilities through mobile measurement partner integrations. According to Moffie, streamr.ai already supports Apps Flyer connectivity for mobile-to-CTV attribution, building on previous work he conducted at AppLovin to enable performance attribution between mobile applications and CTV campaigns.

Creative variation capabilities represent another strategic advantage. Moffie described "GenAI Infinite" as enabling personalized advertisements for different audience segments. The most popular application focuses on deal-seekers, allowing advertisers to show discount-focused creative only to price-sensitive audiences while avoiding waste on full-price customers.

Magnite's dominant CTV market position provides strategic deployment advantages for streamr.ai technology. The company maintains direct relationships with major streaming platforms including Netflix, Disney, Roku, and Warner Bros. Discovery, while securing preferred integrations with over 90% of CTV supply partners.

The acquisition builds on Magnite's recent CTV growth trajectory, with the company reporting CTV contribution excluding traffic acquisition costs growing 15% year-over-year in Q1 2025 to $63.2 million. This performance exceeded company guidance ranges and demonstrates market demand for sophisticated CTV advertising capabilities.

According to Moffie, streamr.ai incorporated in November 2023 and launched its beta in March 2024, representing approximately 18 months from founding to acquisition. This timeline demonstrates the accelerated development cycles possible in AI-first company building approaches.

The integration timeline and specific product rollout schedule were not disclosed in the September 9 announcement. However, Moffie indicated immediate demand from Magnite's ecosystem, noting he received "30 Slacks immediately from agency sellers" asking about GenAI pause ad availability following the acquisition announcement.

Timeline

• November 2023: streamr.ai incorporates with AI-first development approach
• March 2024: streamr.ai launches beta platform for CTV creative automation
• March 2025: Magnite achieves 99% CTV supply coverage according to independent analysis
• May 2025: Magnite reports 15% CTV growth in Q1 2025 financial results
• July 2025: Dentsu expands Magnite partnership across EMEA markets using SpringServe
• August 2025: Magnite launches pause ads across DIRECTV, DISH Media, and Fubo
• September 9, 2025: Magnite announces streamr.ai acquisition to democratize CTV advertising

Summary

Who: Magnite CPO Adam Soroca and streamr.ai CEO Jonathan Moffie, representing the largest independent sell-side advertising company acquiring an AI-powered CTV creative automation platform founded by former Wurl, Yahoo, and Shutterstock executives.

What: A strategic acquisition enabling small and medium-sized businesses to access Connected Television advertising through AI-powered creative generation tools that reduce campaign creation from weeks to under two minutes, distributed through Magnite's ecosystem partners rather than direct sales.

When: The acquisition was announced September 9, 2025, following 18 months of streamr.ai development since November 2023 incorporation and March 2024 beta launch, with integration timeline to be determined.

Where: The transaction affects Magnite's global CTV operations spanning relationships with Netflix, Disney, Roku, Warner Bros. Discovery, and 99% of CTV supply coverage, targeting SMB clients through agency and retail media network partnerships.

Why: To capture the performance television opportunity that could drive order-of-magnitude growth for the open internet ecosystem by democratizing CTV access for millions of search and social advertisers, leveraging industry projections that CTV's media budget share will double from 14% to 28% by 2025.